Skolian Empire: The Radiant Seas Part 20

"Fine." Kurj didn't want to shut him out, but he couldn't relax his barriers.

Even so, his half brother's presence soothed him. Roca and Eldrinson had named Eldrin for his father, dropping the "son" rather than inflicting "Eldrinsonson" on him. For the first year of Eldrin's life, Roca had lived on the Orbiter without her husband. So Kurj had watched Eldrin grow. He had rocked his brother to sleep in his arms, comforted him when he cried, fed him, even cleaned him. In one of the more painful ironies of his life, it was his love for Eldrin that had finally convinced Roca it was safe to return to her husband, that Kurj would never harm the father when doing so would harm the son.

Tonight they talked about a ballad Eldrin was working on, improvements to the house, and a letter from his son Taquinil, an economics professor at Imperial University on Parthonia.

"He talks 'meta' this and 'micro' that," Eldrin said. "I've no idea what he's saying. Dehya seems to understand, though."

"She saw the letter?" Kurj asked.

"Well, yes. Of course."

"Then you've talked to her?"

Eldrin smiled. "I hope so. I live with her, after all."

"When was the last time you saw her? In person, I mean."

"This morning."

Tension eased out of Kurj's muscles. Until this moment he hadn't realized the doubts he harbored about Dehya's life. "Is she all right?"

"Well, yes." Eldrin looked puzzled. "Why wouldn't she be?"

"No one else has seen her for months. Years, even."

His brother laughed. "That can't be true."

"She's always in the web," Kurj pointed out. "What is she doing?"

"I'm not sure, actually. Lately she's been talking about mathematics and precognition." Eldrin rubbed his chin. "She claims it's impossible to tell where mathematical extrapolations of the future leave off and precognition starts. Then she told me that she would always find an escape route for us."

Kurj went very still. "An escape from what?"

He shrugged. "When I asked, she laughed and said it meant nothing, really, that she just thought I might like to write a song about that theme."

"That doesn't sound like what you write." Most of Eldrin's songs were folk ballads about his homeland.

"When she's ready, she'll tell me what she means."

"Let me know what she says," Kurj said.

Eldrin gave him a dry smile. "If it makes sense?"

"Even if it doesn't." Over the years Kurj had become adept at deciphering the often cryptic results of Dehya's accelerated thought processes.

Eldrin regarded him curiously. "Any news with you?"

"It seems I am getting married," Kurj said.

"What! Who is she?"

Kurj scowled. "The a.s.sembly has several candidates in mind, women of the appropriate style, diplomacy, and charisma, none of which it seems I have, according to our esteemed governing body. My input isn't required."

Eldrin's smile faded. "Oh."

"Yes. My reaction."

"Perhaps she will please you."

"Perhaps I won't do it."

Eldrin spoke carefully. "Legally, you have no power to refuse the a.s.sembly. Their law is the law of the Imperialate."

"So they say."

Eldrin paused. "Have you decided what you will do?"

"Perhaps." Kurj left it at that.

After their visit, Kurj walked through the growing dusk to the magrail station. It was dark when his magcar reached his destination, one of the less upscale apartment complexes in City, if any building in that architectural work of art could be called anything but upscale. He went to a bronze door graced by delicate gold leaves. When he touched the bell, a chime came from inside. He waited, then tried again.

No response.

"Steel acknowledge," Kurj said.

"Attending." The voice belonged to a City-wide computer that answered only to him, that indeed no one else knew existed, except probably Dehya.

"Open this door," Kurj said.

The door slid open. Kurj entered a living room decorated in gold and bronze, all in shadow except for light sifting through the open doorway.

"Shall I turn on the lamps?" Steel asked.

"No. Just close the door."

The bedroom was small, filled by the bed, with a wardrobe crammed against one wall and a console in one corner. The shadowed form of a small person made a mound in the big bed.

Kurj sat on the bed and touched the woman's shoulder. She stirred, and sighed in her sleep. He removed his boots, then undressed and set his clothes in an ordered pile on the floor. Then he slid under the covers and drew the woman into his arms. Her filmy nightdress felt soft under his hands. As he took it off, she spoke sleepily. "My greetings, Kurj."

"And mine, Ami."

Her face had matured in the eleven years since he had first seen her as a page in the War Room, but it had never stopped mirroring her gentle nature. It wasn't beauty that kept him coming back to her, long after he usually forgot his favorites. If that had been all he wanted, there were far more spectacular women he could have taken to his bed. Ami was the only person he knew who liked him exactly as he was. She wasn't a politician, an actress, a highborn n.o.blewoman, or a diplomacy adept. She was simply a page who loved him with uncomplicated affection.

They made love in the bronzed shadows. When they finished, the Imperator of Skolia asked his sometimes mistress, an orphan with the most common birth imaginable, to be his wife.

Althor met Syreen and their daughter Eristia in Syreen's apartment. They all stood in the airy living room, drinking cider and making small talk. Eristia gleamed in her silver jumpsuit, with the Dalmer s.h.i.+pping logo emblazoned in blue on her shoulder.

"So, Captain Valdoria." Althor heard the catch in his voice and took a swallow of cider to hide it. "How does it feel to have your own s.h.i.+p?"

Eristia laughed, her eyes as green as a forest. "It only has a two-person crew."

"Only?" Syreen waved her hand. "Twenty-four years old and already she has her own s.h.i.+p. And she says 'only.'"

"Oh, Hoshma," Eristia said.

Althor smiled at the familiar Oh, fill-in-t.i.tle-of-parent phrase. But he was breaking inside. For twenty-four years his daughter had lived only a few hundred meters away from him. True, in the past few years her duties with the s.h.i.+pping line had taken her on extended trips. But always she came back. Today ended that. Today she became captain of her own s.h.i.+p and left home forever, to make her way in a universe she wasn't ready for.

Actually, in his more candid moments, he had to admit his daughter was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. If anything, the universe wasn't ready for Eristia Leirol Valdoria. He had given her the Valdoria name, acknowledging his paternity, never really understanding that part of his paternal duty meant letting her go when the time came.

After they finished the cider, they walked to the magrail and rode out to the Orbiter hull. Eristia and Syreen chatted and Althor listened, afraid that if he joined in his voice would catch again. He had never been good at small talk anyway. Syreen and Eristia had never seemed to mind his taciturn inclinations, as if they knew the affection he felt even if he couldn't express it well.

In an observation module above the docking bay, he and Syreen waited while Eristia donned her environment suit. It fit her like a skin, with a power module in the belt. Then she grinned and saluted them. "Captain Valdoria reporting for duty."

Althor smiled. "I used to be Captain Valdoria."

"Not anymore." She gave him a hug. "Come ride on my s.h.i.+p sometime, Hoshpa."

"I will." His voice caught, despite his efforts to stop it.

"Oh, Daddy," she murmured, her eyes filling with tears. "I love you."

"And I you, Podkin." Realizing what he had said, he added, "I mean Eristia."

"That's all right," she said. "You can call me Podkin."

Eristia hugged Syreen next. And then it was time for her to go.

As they watched their daughter stride out to her s.h.i.+p, Syreen spoke gently. "She's like you were at that age, Althor."

He swallowed, hit again with a familiar surge of relief that his daughter had chosen a civilian route to her dreams. How had his own parents endured it, knowing that every time he went out he could die in combat or be captured? More than ever he understood their relief when Kurj put him behind a desk.

After Eristia's s.h.i.+p left, Althor and Syreen rode the magrail back to City. They were quiet for most of the ride, but toward the end Syreen said, "She turned out well."

"Yes," Althor agreed. "She did." He could hardly contain his swell of pride.

After another stretch of silence, he asked, "Will you stay in the building?" With Eristia gone, Syreen was free to go where she pleased. As much as Althor had wanted them to live near him, he had made clear from the start that he would never force Syreen to remain in City against her will or use his influence to take Eristia away from her if she left. That she had chosen to stay for so many years meant more than to him than he knew how to say.

Her face gentled. "It's a good building. Besides, Eristia will come home for visits."

Althor grinned. "Then we'll have to listen to her say, 'Oh, Hoshma,' and, 'Oh, Daddy.'"

Syreen laughed. "That we will."

They parted at City, having affirmed that their friends.h.i.+p remained strong even without the glue of a daughter. Althor rode to the other side of the Orbiter and went to his office within the hull. He strode through the s.p.a.cious outer rooms, nodding to his mult.i.tude of a.s.sistants, crossed the expanse of his own office, and entered his private web chamber. As he settled into the control chair, its exoskeleton folded around his body and snicked psiphon p.r.o.ngs into his spine and neck, through pores in his uniform. Then he entered psibers.p.a.ce.

The web spread around him in hills and valleys made from a grid, the crisscrossed strands varying from cables of intense activity to filaments on the periphery of his awareness.

Today the atmosphere glowed with vibrancy. Father? he thought.

The "air" answered him. My greetings, Althor. Did Eristia leave?

Yes. Althor let his joy and sadness suffuse the web.

Ah, well. She will always be with you. Just as you are with us.

Father, did I ever say, "Oh, Hoshpa," to you?

Puzzlement tinged the atmosphere. I don't think so. Why do you ask?

Althor smiled. I just wondered if it was hereditary.

His father sent him a sense of laughter. Then his awareness faded as he returned to his work.

As a psicon, Althor lay down on his back and called up his mail on the "sky." Web traffic was heavy now, slowing response with what telops called bytelock. So it took his mail a while to appear. It formed in an unexpected font, the headers made from glistening ice that split the virtual suns.h.i.+ne into rainbows. Bemused, Althor smiled. Coop had been designing new fonts for him again. Althor generally chose a more utilitarian style, but he discovered he liked this one. In the years since Coop had moved in with him, the artist had often enhanced his life in these small ways.

Programmed macros had dealt with most of his messages, but one from Kurj waited for attention, a revised itinerary for his visit to Onyx Platform. He approved the schedule, scrambled the message with the Fling Code, and sent it to Kurj.

Warning. That came from an ISC security monitor. Fling Code no longer secure.

That gave Althor pause. No longer secure meant evidence existed that someone had broken the code or compromised its security. Cancel Fling. What else do you have?

Recommend Wagon Code, the monitor thought.

Wagon isn't complete.

You would be the first to use it.

Will the receiver have the keys to decode it?

Probability is 62 percent.

Do you have anything with a higher reliability?

One of the banked codes.

Give me a list. Banked codes were a select few that had never been used, the intent being to keep a reserve for situations such as this.

A list of psicons appeared in the air, including one of a man bent over a page of music. The Mozart Code. The description intrigued Althor. To scramble a message, the code dismantled glyphs into their const.i.tuent lines and transformed each line according to a random set of complex variable functions that varied with time. Once every microsecond, the code produced microkeys that specified the functions needed to convert the hodgepodge back into a message. It sent those keys to memory cells within the ISC web, the locations specified by a master key of complex functions. The master key required yet another key, the Mozart Key, to decode it. That key consisted of a selection of music and was what the web actually transmitted into s.p.a.ce.

Unless someone knew how to look, finding a Mozart-coded message was almost impossible. Too many billion renditions of his music graced interstellar s.p.a.ce, sent by everyone from professors to lovers to ad agencies to corporations. Add to that the arcane form of the code and its intricate hierarchy of keys, and it produced an almost unbreakable cipher.

Use Mozart, Althor thought.

Scrambling, the monitor answered. Message sent.

Satisfied, Althor turned his attention to his other work.